It’s been a long two weeks since we’ve had a new episode of America’s Next Top Model, but we’re back. Our modeltestants are still trapped in Vegas, what questionable situations will they be put in this week? Let us discuss!
Samir: I wonder how much of a kickback they get from mentioning the SLS hotel? I think Tyra is trying to collect as many BankSigns as she can in the throes of the show’s death rattle because it doesn’t stop with the selling. Including Mikey, riding high on his win and still horny as hell. Anything with a vagina who smiles at him is fair game.
Margaux: Crafty tricks afoot with Lacey’s fall from grace edit, but Top Model editors are never to be believed. But if anyone is fooled into thinking Lacey will be on the bottom for very long is as stupid as Mickey thinking he’d ever score a threesome with Mamé and Hadassah. Hadassah seems to have a questionable standards, but I think Mamé wouldn’t touch Mikey with a ten foot pole. I do like that Devin and Mikey talk about Ashley (formerly of DMA) like she’s dead or something, “ohhh Ashley would’ve loved this”, it’s the fuckin’ Tyra suite – relax. It’s like the nightmare version of Marky Mark’s room in Boogie Nights.
Samir: I found the whole buildup to the threesome potential was particularly unsettling in this episode. The play-by-play drunkenness/compromised consent to build suspense for a potential date-rape threesome we should be afraid of coming to fruition was, to put it mildly, in poor taste. Plus Hadassah, “what happens stays in Vegas” only if you don’t advertise what you do on national television. And please stop pitching the idea that having sexual feelings makes you wild and free as if it will help your modeling be less conservative.
Margaux: Not sure if it’s the Vegas setting or what, but everything from Mikey being short of a rapist and the strange hypnosis of the Zappos plug – THEY SELL HAPPINESS – (and their very brainwashed sounding employees) has a horror movie feeling all over it – unsettling all around.
Samir: And comparing the head of Zappo’s couture to Steve Jobs Devin, not one of your strongest moments if you want us to believe you are intelligent and savvy about the world around you. Then Hadassah pulls that move where she asks Kelly why she was in the bottom two, before she reminds us again of her family life before ANTM. Bye girl.
Margaux: Hadassah can only be in the bottom two so many times, and be given the same critique about how she needs to loosen up, before she gets voted off – and tonight just might be the night. As a pageant girl, I think she enjoys the competition and cattiness more than she likes winning, despite whatever she might saying outwardly.
Samir: And they do NOT mean loosening your vagina for Mikey’s aggressive threesome desires. She must be hard up for some attention, as hard up as Mikey apparently always is. Who knew Devin would hit the nail on the head and asks what else he has to offer.
And this “salon” show where the models become living avatars of Cher’s closet computer program in Clueless just speaks poorly for everyone involved. Do they think we’re convinced high fashion is like this? This is not an Yves Saint Laurent private show at a palatial manse in France.
Margaux: Except trade out Cher’s nice clothes for cheap and tacky Zappos couture! These Zappo couture executives don’t seem know what the hell fashion is, let alone how to work an oversized iPad, these outfits are pretty fug-ugly. This whole salon style feels very out of place for these people and this brand, this show has a lot of pointless challenges, and this salon modeling fits in at the top – at least the CW acting challenge was funny. For us.
Samir: Or pug-ugly. And they criticize the models for liking the garments that the shopper is picking out for them to change into doesn’t seem like sound criteria for judging the performance. Why does Lacey get criticized because “something was dragging you down” when that something was your pre-buyer’s remorse of the terrible outfits you kept putting together once you saw them. No model can make an unappealing outfit that doesn’t work for you, work for you. The problem is your taste level. I smell confusions editing afoot with Mikey and Lacey.
Margaux: And to make matters worse, Lacey has a Devin-esque response to receiving a 7 on her challenge. Lacey is working hard to convince us that she’s lost her mojo in service of this sub-plot of Hadassah and Mikey collaborating genitals. Ugh, let’s just get to Lacey, Nyle, and Mamé being the top 3, this riff-raff (and Mikey does look like FL rapper Riff Raff a little bit) feels extra pointless.
But just because Top Model is cancelled, doesn’t mean we’ll stop getting more Tyra made up words, and this week our main challenge photo shoot centers on a new made up word that incorporates social media, Fierce-a-gram. Each model gets a personalized hashtag they don’t get to come up with themselves, let the questionable photos begin!
Samir: And the photos are shot in CU and wide shot, so the hashtag is one you send to a significant other in your life like a partner, a boss, etc and the cropped ‘gram shows what they want to show to that other person, and the wide shows what’s really going on. Sothe face has to communicate the hashtag, and the wide shot has to show the whole scene where the face still somehow works. Fun idea, but it seems the other models are the background you have to compete with directly, as well as Miss J. Luckily, Nyle is in many of these in skimpy clothing. But i noticed that Tyra’s boyfriend, back again as photographer, made yet some more crucial errors. Nyle comes into Hadassah’s shoot in khaki short shorts, and in the final photo he has one pant leg on the one in front and no pants leg on the other one. Wah wah. That skull in front of Mikey’s crotch in his shoot was apropos -playing with that part of him is career and self-esteem death.
Margaux: Not only do they have to compete with their fellow models and Miss Jay, but also, a rooster. It’s like Tyra wanted to throw in literally everything but the kitchen sink because it was bolted down and she didn’t have time to rip it out. At least we get another patented Yu Tsai burn, courtesy of Hadassah finally letting loose in Mamé’s shoot, “you even stole the photo Mamé, just hope it’s not too late for your own photo”. Oh Yu Tsai, I’ll miss your talking down to impressionable, young models.
Samir: Tyra was just cock-hungry apparently. Her BF was missing the last couple episodes. And what was that Walmart group meeting cheer of “Cycle 22!” as if there were more to follow? The title of the episode clearly referred to the cockiest guy in the house, Mikey. But even the preview of the next episode has hints of his incessant hitting on whatever female was closet and prettiest. Can someone explain to me how much Hadassah has “changed so much” to me? Aside from her Ty-over she seems exactly the same as when she started a whole 8 days ago (if they’ve even been filming this long).
Margaux: I think she considers having the side of head shaved and not being in the bottom two for the entirety of cycle 22 as transformative. But we both know that the more you whine about how much you’ve changed, what they’ve sacrificed – coupled with talking about your family – equals you going home. And the only reason why it’s sad that Hadassah will go home is because it’s before Mikey and Hadassah’s type of mean girl shit talking is infinitely more entertaining than Mikey’s dead-eye sexual assault convict.
Samir: I find it strange that Hadassah was chosen to portray #studyinghard when she utters the words “I was trying not to think. I mean I was thinking, just not hard.” I get what she was trying to say, but it’s all about the execution. The most epically awful of them all was Devin’s though, who on earth would ask him and his crazy eyebrows to watch over their children? He looks like he’s about to suck the lifeblood out of that baby to preserve his youth. BTW Tyra, keeps pushing that Mikey nonsense. Really “best photo of the week??” Have you noticed that his expression from week to week has not changed anymore than Lacey’s, yet they confuse the set-dressing with his performance as communicating the vibe of the photo?
Margaux: Mikey must remind Tyra of a hillbilly version of Mr. Tyra or something because the amount praise heaped upon him in the last two episodes is wholly unfounded and unwarranted. Even though Mamé wins this week, Tyra tells her it’s because Mamé’s score was just too dang high (thanks to her Zappos win), but then loudly tells Mikey that HE’S best photo in her eyes (she gives him a fuckin’ ten and Kelly scores him at 9.2 – we’re doing fractions of a score now, really?) and is crowned runner up. Barf. No. And it’s hilarious that Mickey criticizes Lacey for only having “one” look – WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT LIFELESS EXPRESSION YOU’RE DOING, MIKEY? All of you are one-note to a certain extent because you’re amateurs on a very condensed shoot schedule so there’s honestly only so much you can improve anyway, can we please stop kidding ourselves? You only have one look is the show’s “I’m not here to make friends”.
Samir: Didn’t you know how important these numbers are? The judging is so precisely quantified they have to narrow it down to the thousands of a percent to determine who is the superior model…because they’re a foolproof “scale of modeling” (like Dr. Benjamin Stone’s Scale of Evil) to accurately gauge their skill and talent. Tyra keeps mentioning it, that it’s the numbers that matter, (in addition to “passion,” “tooching,” “booching,” “tension” and “movement”). What about marketability and and not listening to you Tyra? That seems more helpful in the long-run to becoming a Top Model this week, not smizing quotients.
Margaux: Thankfully, “The Guy Who Closes the Deal in Vegas” – which, spoiler alert, he doesn’t- marks the end of the models “business” trip to Vegas and will return to LA next week. Gosh, this show is going out with a whimper and not a bang, but we will carry on for them.
Let’s talk stars.
Samir: That “whimper/bang” quote in A Star is Born where an agent referred to his ex-client/alcoholic whom he hated, says a lot. James Mason walks into the ocean to kill himself, for relief from his demons and to spare his wife Judy Garland the pain and indignity of his slow descent, as her star rapidly ascends. I can’t help but see an eerie parallel to this series, though what star was ascending as Tyra’s plummeted? This episode sank a little for me in entertainment value, other than the evergreen fun of pinpointing the editing landmarks of the story arcs, and demarcating the clumsily shoehorned-in commercials-within-the show and the bald red herrings. 3.5 stars.
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